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From: tdn@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA (Thomas Newton)
Newsgroups: net.audio,net.music
Subject: Sound quality of CDs
Message-ID: <446@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 3-Sep-85 21:25:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-s.446
Posted: Tue Sep  3 21:25:20 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 08:00:34 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 36
Xref: watmath net.audio:5742 net.music:9095

[If I've posted this message to the wrong newsgroup(s), advice on where it
 should be posted would be more appreciated than flamage.]

Does anyone out there have any useful comments on the sound quality of various
CDs, especially those produced from analog recordings?  I've noticed that the
amount of hiss on the analog albums I have ranges from very low (Billy Joel:
An Innocent Man) to very high (Stevie Nicks: Bella Donna).  I got a CD player
largely for sound quality; while I am willing to put up with a certain amount
of hiss on analog albums (out of necessity), I want to avoid buying CDs that
have a lot of hiss (why pay $16 for a CD when one could pay $7 for a LP with
the same sound quality?).

In particular, if I had known how much hiss was on the "Bella Donna" album,
I would not have bought it in CD form.  The first track starts off with a fair
amount of hiss, which within about two seconds increases in volume to a really
horrible level.  The hiss is also "sharper" than the hiss on the other analog
CDs that I own.  Considering that most of the songs on the album were written
around 1980, the sound quality is inexcusable.

Another CD to avoid is Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water".
I haven't had the "pleasure" of listening to this one personally, but another
student had the misfortune of buying it and a mutual friend told me about it.
I went and got my tape of the album (to see if the hiss was worse than normal
cassette levels) and noticed that Columbia hadn't even taken the trouble to
Dolby-encode it!!!  When I played it, the sound was downright painful!!  I've
heard that the CD is *believe-it-or-not* WORSE, because every last detail of
the noise on the master is perfectly reproduced.

On a completely different subject, does anyone know why an artist would make
one digitally-recorded album, then go back to analog recording?  Apparently,
both Billy Joel and Bob Dylan have done this (while 'The Nylon Curtain' and
'Infidels' were digitally recorded, 'An Innocent Man' and Dylan's latest CD
were recorded using analog equipment).  Is digital equipment hard to find?

                                        -- Thomas Newton
                                           Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA